Playing Your Hand In Poker

Playing Poker With Friends For The First Time? Here's Where To Start

Apr 11, 2009

Poker can be a tough game for a newcomer, especially against experienced players. Here's how to avoid being caught out of your depth.

Any poker beginner knows that it can be intimidating to play with people who are more experienced than you are. It can also be extremely frustrating for the casual player who only plays for the social aspects of the game.

If you're struggling against people who you know are better than you, but don't have time to spend hours playing online or studying poker manuals, here's how to give yourself a fighting chance of staying in the game long enough to actually enjoy it. For the purposes of this guide, it's assumed you're playing Texas Hold 'Em, as that's by far the most common form of poker played socially around the world.

Know Your Hand

Assuming you know the order of hands (one pair, two pair, and so on), the next most important thing is that you know how likely it is that your hand will win the overall hand itself. For example, if there are five of you in the hand and you draw a middling pocket pair (two cards of the same value in your two-card hand) such as a pair of eights, your chances of winning the hand probably depend on what comes down in the flop (the first three cards revealed face up on the table, available to all players involved in the hand) or even the turn and river (the fourth and fifth cards revealed respectively).

However, if you are playing "heads-up" poker - that is to say, with only two players involved, in a head-to-head format - then the chances of your pair of eights being the best hand in the game are significantly increased, even if the flop were the same as it was with five players involved.

Calculating the mathematical likelihood of an opponent having a particular hand can be done, and is done by almost all accomplished players, but as a beginner trying to do so is likely to complicate things unnecessarily. This means the most important thing is to know, roughly speaking, where you stand on the sliding scale that ranges from "unbeatable" to "I wish I'd folded".

Don't Bluff

Probably the one thing that every poker beginner wishes they could do is to be able to bluff their way into winning big money. Bluffing - in other words, betting as if you had a better hand than you actually do - often seems like an easy way to win money when the cards aren't going your way, but in reality it's a complex process which often confuses beginners.

If you're playing with more than one or two other more experienced players, they will likely find it much easier than you think to work out whether or not you're bluffing. Bluffing effectively takes an awareness of not only other people's betting patterns, but your own as well, and a willingness to lose big money if the bluff doesn't pay off.

If you're a beginner trying to hold your own at a table full of more advanced players, your best option is to keep it simple - if you have good cards, bet. If you don't, don't bet. If you're not sure, always play on the safe side and fold.

The copyright of the article Playing Your Hand In Poker in Poker is owned by Matthew Pitt. Permission to republish Playing Your Hand In Poker in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.